The present invention relates to circuit breakers, and more particularly relates to a circuit breaker device which assists in installation.
During installation of a circuit breaker, terminal straps extending from either a line side or a load side of a circuit breaker must be connected to its source or load (such as to bus lines or cable lines). Connection may be accomplished by inserting a screw, or other rod-shaped connector, through a hole in the terminal strap and through an opening in a connector for the source or load. A nut, or equivalent receiving or tightening device, may then be attached to the screw for securing the connection between the terminal strap and the source or load.
When a screw is used to make the above-described connection, holding a nut for assembly of the load/source connector to the terminal strap is awkward and labor intensive. In some instances, holding the nut by hand is practically impossible and an alternative assembly method must be selected.
Threaded terminal straps are prone to being stripped if the proper screw is not used or if it is over-torqued. If they are stripped, then the entire circuit breaker may need to be replaced (at significant expense) or an alternate fastening method may be required. Furthermore, threaded terminal straps use threaded holes which do not allow for any misalignment of parts.
Individual terminal nut retainers exist which connect with a circuit breaker. These are somewhat inconvenient to use since each one needs to be connected individually. In addition, access to the terminals is limited since additional plastic is required to give each individual nut retainer the proper support.
In an exemplary embodiment of the invention, a multipole termination connector for holding a plurality of screw apertures adjacent a plurality of terminal straps extending from a circuit breaker is disclosed. The multipole termination connector comprises a molded housing, a plurality of single-pole screw accepting members, each screw accepting member having a molded portion integrally formed with the molded housing and a screw receiving portion located on the molded portion. An aperture in preferably provided in each screw receiving portion and an attachment device preferably extends from the molded housing and is adapted to attach the multipole termination connector to a circuit breaker.